Raphaël Millière: The Vector Grounding Problem and Self-Consciousness

Raphaël Millière: The Vector Grounding Problem and Self-Consciousness

Author: Daniel Bashir August 4, 2023 Duration: 2:04:52

In episode 84 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Raphaël Millière.

Professor Millière is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Previously, he was the 2020 Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience in Columbia University’s Center for Science and Society, and completed his DPhil in philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he focused on self-consciousness.

Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at editor@thegradient.pub

Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on Twitter

Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (02:20) Prof. Millière’s background

* (08:07) AI + philosophy questions and the human side / empiricism

* (18:38) Putting aside metaphysical issues

* (20:28) Prof. Millière’s work on self-consciousness, does consciousness constitutively involve self-consciousness?

* (32:05) Relationship to recent pronouncements about AI sentience

* (41:54) Chatbots’ self-presentation as having a “self”

* (51:05) Intro to grounding and related concepts

* (1:00:06) The different types of grounding

* (1:08:48) Lexical representations and things in the world, distributional hypothesis, concepts in LLMs

* (1:21:40) Representational content and overcoming the vector grounding problem

* (1:32:01) Causal-informational relations and teleology

* (1:43:45) Levels of grounding, extralinguistic aspects of meaning

* (1:52:12) Future problems and ongoing projects

* (2:04:05) Outro

Links:

* Professor Millière’s homepage and Twitter

* Research

* Are There Degrees of Self-Consciousness?

* The Varieties of Selflessness

* Selfless Memories

* The Vector Grounding Problem



Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Hosted by Daniel Bashir, The Gradient: Perspectives on AI moves beyond surface-level headlines to explore the intricate machinery and human ideas shaping artificial intelligence. Each episode is built on a foundation of deep research, leading to conversations that are both technically substantive and broadly accessible. You'll hear from researchers, engineers, and philosophers who are actively building and critiquing our technological future, discussing not just how AI systems work, but the larger implications of their integration into society. This isn't about speculative hype; it's a grounded examination of real progress, persistent challenges, and ethical considerations from those on the front lines. The discussions peel back layers on topics like model architecture, policy, and the fundamental science behind the algorithms becoming part of our daily lives. For anyone curious about the substance behind the buzz-whether you have a technical background or are simply keen to understand a defining technology of our age-this podcast offers a crucial and thoughtful resource. Tune in for a consistently detailed and nuanced take that treats artificial intelligence with the complexity it deserves.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Gradient: Perspectives on AI
Podcast Episodes
Linus Lee: At the Boundary of Machine and Mind [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:28:46
In episode 56 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Linus Lee. Linus is an independent researcher interested in the future of knowledge representation and creative work aided by machine understanding of langua…
Suresh Venkatasubramanian: An AI Bill of Rights [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:40:58
In episode 55 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian. Professor Venkatasubramanian is a Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at Brown University, where his research…
Melanie Mitchell: Abstraction and Analogy in AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:47
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!In episode 53 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Melanie Mitchell. Professor Mitchell is the Davis Professor at the…
Marc Bellemare: Distributional Reinforcement Learning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:12:22
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!In episode 52 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Marc Bellemare. Professor Bellemare leads the reinforcement learni…
François Chollet: Keras and Measures of Intelligence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:50
In episode 51 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to François Chollet.François is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google and creator of the Keras deep learning library, which has enabled many people (includ…
Yoshua Bengio: The Past, Present, and Future of Deep Learning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:14:09
Happy episode 50! This week’s episode is being released on Monday to avoid Thanksgiving. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!In episode 50 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bash…
Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht: Generally Intelligent [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:21
In episode 49 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht. Kanjun and Josh are CEO and CTO of Generally Intelligent, an AI startup aiming to develop general-purpose agents with human-lik…

«1...678910